A joint initiative by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice has shut down a spam operation that posed as America Online and Paypal to con consumers into providing credit card and bank account numbers.
Defendant Zachary Keith Hill of Houston, Texas was named in the FTC complaint and the DOJ criminal information filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division. The Justice Department obtained a criminal conviction and the defendant is awaiting sentencing.
According to the FTC, consumers received an e-mail that appeared to come from AOL or Paypal, with a subject line such as “Please Update Account Information Urgent” The text of the message contained a warning that if the consumer did not respond, their account would be cancelled. A hyperlink in the e-mail took consumers to what appeared to be the AOL Billing Center, with AOL’s logo and live links to real AOL Web pages.
But, said the FTC, the copy-cat page belonged to the defendant, which asked consumers to provide information such as their names and mothers’ maiden names, billing addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, bank account numbers, and bank routing numbers. The defendant also asked consumers to provide their AOL screen names and passwords.
The FTC alleges that the defendant used the information consumers submitted to establish new credit card accounts and to make unauthorized changes on existing credit accounts.
The Paypal scheme worked in a similar way, with the defendant using Paypal passwords that consumers provided to purchase goods or services on their accounts.
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